Michael Novak

Posts tagged with ‘Patheos’

The pro-life argument is overpoweringly clear to me. But in argument against supporters of legalized abortion, I was always puzzled because I could not grasp their reasons. Maybe they didn’t understand their own reasons, either. I seldom heard reasons for their point of view, but far more often intense emotional blasts. “Keep your rosaries off my ovaries!”

For the last three summers, I have been very lucky to hire students from Ave Maria University to help me finish some writing, pack up boxes of books, arrange my papers, clear out the beach house and give things to various charities, and the like.
I hope they forgive me for calling them “the kids,” but when they are with me, that is how I feel about them. They seem like my own grandchildren.

The first pope to visit the United States was Paul VI in October 1965, just before the close of Vatican II. Pope John Paul II during his long reign visited seven times. And Benedict came in 2008. So there is already a tradition of popes getting to know our country.
Welcome to America, Pope Francis! We’re eager to hear what you have to say

Liberty releases the eminently realizable hope of bringing every woman, man, and child into the circle of universal affluence, which this planet has been fashioned to support. As Francis affirms in Laudato Si’ (93-95, 158), following his predecessors Benedict and John Paul II, the goods of the earth have been given a universal destination, and that destination is the freeing of everyone on earth from the prison of poverty.
Freedom, too, has its own ecology. Blue Environmentalism cherishes the ecology of liberty.

"'By the word of the Lord the heavens were made' (Ps 33:6). This tells us that the world came about as the result of a decision, not from chaos or chance, and this exalts it all the more. The creating word expresses a free choice. The universe did not emerge as the result of arbitrary omnipotence, a show of force or a desire for self-assertion. Creation is of the order of love. God’s love is the fundamental moving force in all created things: “For you love all things that exist, and detest none of the things that you have made; for you would not have made anything if you had hated it” (Wis 11:24). Every creature is thus the object of the Father’s tenderness, who gives it its place in the world. (Laudato Si’, 77)"

In view of the new encyclical of Pope Francis, Michael Novak revisits the idea of “Blue Environmentalism" in a short series adapted from some 2003 writings.
"The crucial insight, of which Pope Francis reminds us, is that nature is meant for man, not man for nature. Human beings are made by their unique endowment of liberty to be provident over their own destiny. One important way to exercise this providence is to take care not to foul our habitat."